


The North Edge

by Sholio



Series: Shadows of the Apt fusion [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6084090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>White Collar/Shadows of the Apt fusion, part 2. Peter and Neal have managed to get out of the desert, but from here it's every insect-kinden for himself (or herself). Read notes first, because the series gets increasingly dark from here!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The North Edge

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this back in December, but have struggled with posting it, because of the general nature of the story. I actually feel sort of guilty about starting this series and then going ahead and working on it, because, well ...
> 
> The thing about this fic series is that I started writing it while I was reading the first couple books in the fantasy series that inspired it, when I thought the books were a very different thing than they turned out to be. Well ... it's a 10-book series. And it gets dark. DA-A-A-ARK. As I worked on future installments of the fusion while reading it, the fic got darker. And darker ...
> 
> I just need to point out that no one is going to end up in a particularly nice place. They're not going to be friends in the end. They're mostly going to die. This specific fic has no character death warnings because no one dies, _yet_ , but (if I continue writing it) that's not going to continue to be the case. There's a war going on, and the characters are mostly on opposite sides. They will hurt each other, and betray each other, and they will die.
> 
> (Not ALL of them, but most of them.)
> 
> Obviously you can stop at any point, and anticipate whatever sort of ending you like! But as far as the installments I'm writing ... don't expect a happy ending. A couple of characters will get one, but most of them won't.
> 
> If you haven't bailed yet ...
> 
> This installment introduces AU!Elizabeth, who is a Spider-kinden. For those of you who haven't read the books (i.e. most of you), the Spider-kinden's particular set of Arts involve infiltration, spying, and manipulating others' minds. They are the ultimate Black Widows.

Had Elyssa been a Beetle or a Wasp or any other of the Apt races, she would have said it was pure coincidence that she happened to be in a caravan town in the Dryclaw Desert when word came in of the slave caravan lost, with a particular Rekef agent aboard.

But Elyssa was a Spider, and a Spider born and raised in a small satrapy in the Spiderlands, where the old ways held sway even more strongly than in the more cosmopolitan cities. She lived in a world of signs and portents, a world where the magic disdained by the Apt was a very real, though subtle, part of her everyday life. And so it did not seem at all strange to her that a small tug on the web in one place or another could have brought her here, of all places, to the one spot where word of Petric's death would enter her ears. Logic and probability said that she could have gone for years without knowing, and possibly forever; the world was large, and even more chaotic than usual with the war. Instead, she was cooling her heels as part of a trader's caravan guard in a small oasis town when the news trickled in.

Elyssa had been roaming around the edges of the Dryclaw, off and on, for the last few years. She had realized a long time ago that there were limited options for a short and unassuming young Spider woman with no family connections, and she had no intention of making her way through the world on her back, so she'd cultivated different kinds of connections instead. She was Rekef Outlander, part of the Wasps' spy network -- not because she had any great love of the Empire, but because a wise Spider missed no opportunity to curry favor from those in whose direction the winds of fortune seemed to be blowing. Still, she was well aware that Rekef agents were considered expendable, and particularly those of the so-called lesser races, and so she had worked hard to walk the fine line of making herself useful without coming to any particular notice. At the same time, she made sure to have a number of fallback plans for the inevitable day when the Rekef thing fell through. Working for the Rekef did not come with a retirement plan, and few indeed were the Rekef agents who lived to be old.

One of the things she'd done, in furthering both of these goals, was to make contact with the Scorpion tribes. She didn't have _friends_ among them, exactly, but she had used a combination of her Spider's Art of persuasion, along with the physical toughness that people did not usually expect from her, to acquire contacts among them, giving her names to drop elsewhere. It was yet another fine line to walk in the great balancing act that was her life -- she didn't trust the Scorpions any more than she trusted the Rekef, but she did well for herself as a caravan guard, leading her charges around the boundaries of Scorpion tribal territories and bartering with any tribes they happened to meet. 

She still had the problem of getting hired in the first place -- a short woman whose features clearly branded her a Spider, which made most people in this part of the Lowlands think of effete nobility (which showed how much they knew about Spiders) despite the well-used sword on her hip. Those who looked closer, though, saw a woman who was tough as nails, her hair tied back severely, scars visible on her deeply tanned face and her callused, sun-roughened hands.

Of course, being a Spider, she could also convert herself with an evening's work into a lady suitable to present to the scion of a wealthy merchant house: the scars covered with makeup, the tight bun of her working hairstyle let down and teased and scented. In dealing with Wasps, at least if she wanted to get something out of them, she frequently played up the feminine in this way. She had learned they responded favorably to it, having been raised to think of women as empty-headed arm ornaments and little else. (Someday, Elyssa thought, the women of the Empire were going to rise up and get their own back, and the men wouldn't know what hit them.) On the other hand, sometimes it was just as useful to disconcert them by walking in with a mannish stride in mannish attire, hand on her sword hilt, and letting them deal with that side of her instead.

The Rekef tended to keep her on a long leash, which she took as a sign that she was doing a good job of making herself useful, but not _too_ useful. Right now she was doing nothing more taxing than picking up gossip around the caravan watering holes and reporting back occasionally to her handler in Asta, a dull stick of a Rekef lieutenant who was both unimaginative and cruel, and was probably stuck sifting through Dryclaw reports because he wasn't good for much else.

He was no Petric, that was for sure.

 _Which is a good thing, isn't it?_ she thought, and realized that she was playing with the small venomous Spider-spines hidden in her knuckles, letting them slip out and back in.

The image of Petric lying dead in the shifting desert sands was a disturbing one. But then, Petric always disturbed her -- he had a unique way of bringing out shifting tides of emotion that made it difficult to maintain her Spider's practiced calm. What those emotions were, at the moment, she could not quite say.

The trader she traveled with was a Beetle, and therefore his maps, the maps of the Apt, were of no use to her. Instead she spent the day wandering about the little town, dipping into its handful of dusty drinking holes to talk to people, and finally consulted a fortune teller, an odd-looking Grasshopper-Scorpion halfbreed woman, who lived in a rocky cave just outside town. When Elyssa emerged into the bloody evening light, she had decided that she would need to inform her trader that she could not continue onward with him. Her Rekef information-gathering activities would now take her to a different part of the desert than her current haunts.

She and Petric had unfinished business to settle.

 

***

 

After the utter emptiness of the open desert, the rough country at the foot of the mountains seemed, to Petric and Niall, almost lush by comparison. It was still dry and wild, the vegetation mostly taking the form of low yellow grass, scrub brush, and thorny, wind-gnarled trees; it was riven with a hundred twisting arroyos of the sort they'd sheltered in, and the many stony outcrops and ridges rising into the foothills made the land, as glimpsed in Petric's brief flights, look as rucked up as a rumpled blanket on an unmade bed. It would be, he thought, a miserable place to try to scrape a living.

But people did live here. The first indication of human habitation was the tumbledown remains of a shack they came to at dusk, a stone foundation with a collapsed wooden roof, where they sheltered their first night after leaving the water hole. They approached cautiously, but there were no tracks save those of wild beetles and scorpions, and dust had drifted deeply across the open doorway. Inside, Petric made a small fire for warmth and comfort, and they chewed lizard jerky beside it.

 _And what happens to us now,_ Petric thought, observing his unasked-for traveling companion across the fire. Niall was huddled in the remains of the dusty and ragged Wasp clothing he'd taken from the dead; his golden skin had a gray pallor, even warmed by the firelight. He was, Petric knew, still feverish and weak from the scorpion sting, and the day's travel, particularly scouting by air, had worn him out.

Still, Niall had returned from his scouting trip to tell Petric that he'd seen a road, little more than a narrow track in the dust, but regularly used, he thought. 

And where there were roads, there were people, Petric mused. They would be an odd mix here, for this area was claimed by no one except, nominally, the Empire, and therefore it was a land of outcasts and halfbreeds and loners, Roach-kinden and rogue Ants, Grasshoppers from beyond the Great Barrier Ridge, Scorpions driven from their tribes.

But there would also be, sooner or later, Imperial soldiers en route to somewhere else; there would be towns, and opportunities to make contact with his superiors, those of both the army and the Rekef. Right now, they most likely thought he was dead, but that situation couldn't last forever.

 _Couldn't it?_ countered a small, rogue part of him.

Huddled by the fire, with the wind moaning outside the hut, he spent a little while entertaining that rebellious notion. Once, long ago, Petric had believed wholeheartedly in the rightness of the Empire and its cause. But he had been very young then. Most of his career in the Rekef had been spent at the very fringes of the Empire, and he had spent more time, over his lifetime, in the company of non-Wasps than among his own people. Petric wasn't stupid, and he had figured out, in time, that his people's talk of racial superiority was largely propaganda, and that the Wasps were no more or less fit to rule the world than the Beetles or the Ants or even the superstitious and backward Dragonflies.

But still, he _was_ a Wasp, and he had a duty to his people, if not to the Empire itself.

His eyes again found Niall, across the fire, who appeared to have fallen asleep. Petric had no doubt that as soon as they were out of the desert, the former slave would be headed home as fast as he could -- back to the Commonweal, or what was left of it.

_There would certainly be no welcome for me there._

And besides, he couldn't just _run._ Abandon his people, his duty, his place in the world? Niall, at least, had a place to go. Petric didn't; his place was here, in the Imperial army and the Rekef, and he could be nowhere else. Anywhere in the Lowlands, his features would mark him as a Wasp -- an enemy, an outsider. Even if he went further, if he went to the Spiderlands or tried to penetrate the Commonweal, he would be taken as a spy.

_Perhaps there are even farther places ..._

But just the thought of putting so much effort into escaping -- from his own people! -- made him exhausted and brought a wave of self-loathing. He was not the most loyal Wasp but he _was_ a Wasp, and if the idea of turning traitor had begun feeling less foul over the years, he still fought against an inner barrier to making the final choice, severing that last tie.

 _I wish I had died in the desert,_ he thought, with a kind of weary anger, as he closed his eyes to make an attempt at sleep, which seemed to be getting ever further away from him, despite his desperate exhaustion.

And yet he'd fought so hard to live, back then, when it seemed that his life really was slipping away from him. All through that first long day in the automotive, when he could feel himself growing ever weaker from heat and thirst; and again, later, when his body was dying around him in the desert, he'd fought to live. He hadn't realized until then, with death so near he could feel it breathing down his neck, that he truly did not want to die.

 _But what are you saving yourself for?_ he asked himself. _To do the Empire's bloody-handed work, or to betray your people and live a useless life, benefiting no one, as a fugitive among people who hate you --_

"I can hear you brooding from all the way over here," Niall's voice said.

Petric's eyes snapped open. The Dragonfly-kinden was regarding him across the embers of the fire with a slight, tired smile. It wasn't mocking, but Petric was not quite able to bring himself to smile back.

"At least one of us should be asleep."

"Can't sleep for the sound of brooding." Niall shifted, adjusting his body in an attempt to find a more comfortable position. At the spring, at least, there had been sand to sleep on. Here there was nothing but the hard, rocky ground.

Petric found a smile at last, but it was a bitter one. "I'm not going to turn you in. I promised that. When we reach a place where you can go, then go."

"It's ... not that, exactly." Niall looked uncomfortable, from more than just the awkward sleeping arrangements. "I mean, I _don't_ trust you, I think I'd be a fool to -- you as much as told me so yourself. It's more that I don't know ... I was wondering if _you_ knew ..."

He paused again, leaving Petric thoroughly baffled now. "If I knew what?" Petric prompted at last.

"If you know anything of the Commonweal," Niall said reluctantly, gazing at the embers rather than at the man across the fire. "All the news I have is a long way out of date. I know a treaty was signed, but ... I also know how your people deal with treaties."

Denials rose on Petric's lips; he swallowed them back. It wasn't untrue.

"So what I'm wondering, I guess," Niall said to the fire, "is what's left for me to go back to. I ... don't even know if _you_ know, and I guess you wouldn't know anything about my Principality, or my village, or my family. But, if the Commonweal itself is still there, if it still exists at all, and not as ... as an extension of the Empire, just another place to put factories ..."

He looked up, meeting Petric's eyes at last, and Petric was struck all over again by how young he was. Little more than a youth, really -- a youth thrown, unprepared, into the fires of war. There was a desperate pleading on his face.

"It's still there," Petric said. "So far as I know, anyway. The eastern Principalities are ours, but as far as I know, the rest of it goes on as it ever has." In banditry, feuds, and superstition, from what he'd heard. Still, his own people liked to forget that they'd been much the same until just three generations ago.

Niall closed his eyes briefly; a spasm of intense emotion crossed his face, tucked quickly behind walls. "So," he murmured, and his voice shook a little. "There is something to go back to, after all."

"If you can get there," Petric couldn't help pointing out. He hadn't even realized how utterly cut off from news of his homeland Niall must have been during his captivity. Not even to know if it still existed ...

He had no particular love for Capitas, but he wondered what it would feel like to not even know if it had fallen to invaders ... years ago, perhaps.

"One thing at a time," Niall said softly, and he huddled into his filthy Wasp uniform and closed his eyes again. This time his breathing deepened quickly into sleep -- losing the battle with his exhaustion, mostly.

It wasn't until Niall was asleep that Petric let himself smile, just a little. One of them had some hope, at least.

 

***

 

In the morning they chewed a little more of the rank, tough jerky, and abandoned the tumbledown hut to the dry wind. After Niall stepped outside, Petric looked around warily and then crouched quickly and scraped with his knife blade at one of the stones along the base of the wall, leaving a Rekef sign. It wasn't much, but it would let any other Rekef agent who came this way know that another had been here recently, and which way they were headed.

"What are you doing?" Niall asked from the doorway.

Petric levered himself back to his feet with the help of his walking stick. "Just checking for anything useful."

"Like what?" Niall asked as Petric limped out to join him. "Rocks? Got plenty of those."

"You never know if something might have been left behind."

Niall didn't press further, which seemed uncharacteristic. He was visibly drooping, and he didn't take to wing, stumping along with Petric on the ground instead. The journey was sapping their strength badly, Petric knew, between the lack of food and water, and their lingering injuries and illness dragging them down. They both needed a week in a decent bed with proper food, but that seemed far away right now.

Around noon they came to the road Niall had seen from the air. It was nothing special, a rutted cart track winding across the flattest available portion of the rough terrain. Neither way seemed better than the other.

"Want me to scout?" Niall asked.

The fact that he was asking rather than simply jumping into the air and deploying his wings let Petric know all he needed to know about Niall's current physical state. Still, they could spend days walking in the wrong direction, and they hadn't yet found a place to refill their canteen; they were down to a few sips in the bottom. "Just a little ways. Don't push it too hard." He had a vision of Niall losing his Art-created wings in a lethal fall -- or simply dropping somewhere unknown, far from water or hope of rescue.

He slumped wearily on a rock while waiting for Niall to come back, and clamped down on his self-control to stop himself taking a drink from the too-light canteen. He was so thirsty it _hurt._ Worse, without water they couldn't keep eating -- trying to eat the jerky was part of the problem. But they had nothing else, and they needed energy ...

Niall circled back down and landed in a puff of dust. He'd only been gone for a moment or two, not even long enough to get out of sight, though he was already breathless from the exertion. "Wagon coming," he reported. "That way."

Petric scrambled to his feet, laying aside his crutch so his hand was ready to sting. "Who?"

"I couldn't tell. I didn't want to get too close. Not military, I don't think. It was just a little thing with a draft beetle pulling, and a couple of animals tied up behind."

"Traders?" Petric suggested, but then a more likely thought occurred to him. "Refugees."

Niall looked at Petric, then at himself. Their Wasp uniforms were unrecognizable under the dust and blood, but there was no disguising Petric's Wasp features. 

They were going to have to deal with it sooner or later, though. They couldn't go running off into the desert every time they met people. And so they waited. As the dust cloud appeared over the next ridge, Petric let his good hand rest open and empty at his side, flexing the fingers. Just in case.

In the end, though, it turned out to be a small family of Roach-kinden on the move, and they didn't ask questions about taking on a couple of travelers and sharing their food, in return for a promise of help in defending their wagons and gathering firewood at the camp that night.

The next few days passed in similar fashion. The two of them hitched rides where possible, slept in abandoned buildings or begged a bed and meal at farmhouses, offering what services they could in return. They spent two days at a looted and fire-gutted farm when Petric's fever threatened to return, just as Niall's intermittent bouts of fever and weakness were finally clearing up. Although the place had been cleaned out, there were enough gleanings to feed themselves for a little while -- old fruit from the orchard, stray farm animals they managed to catch and kill. And Niall located some old clothing in an outbuilding. It was nothing special, just patched and ragged cloaks and tunics, but it made them a bit less conspicuous -- or, at least, not quite so likely to be taken for escapees or deserters from a distance, and shot on sight.

Of which only one was true, Petric thought. He just needed to find somewhere he could get word to the Rekef or the Wasp army, and hook back up with his own people. He was still leaving subtle Rekef signs here and there, when he could get away with it, just in case there were other agents in the neighborhood. He didn't expect anyone was looking for him, at least not for any motivation that would benefit him. Rekef agents dropping out of sight was not unusual, for a number of reasons, and the only reason why the Rekef would bother specifically sending anyone after a stray agent was to make sure they hadn't talked -- it was the sort of "help" that was unlikely to end well for the agent in question. On the other hand, "be on the lookout for Agent So-and-So in your area" was an instruction he'd gotten more than once, when someone was wandering, and being able to get in touch with the local Rekef would be a help.

In the meantime he and Niall continued to travel together because, in these rough times, it was easier for two than one. Another set of eyes around the campfire, another blade in a fight -- and they did get into a few fights, though never with seriously dangerous opponents, just small and untrained roving gangs who were looking for easy pickings from travelers and quickly abandoned the fight when it became obvious they were up against skilled opponents. Once they hid from a well-armed and mounted war band consisting of some dozen people, led by a tall Scorpion mixed-breed. _Those_ opponents they knew they couldn't take on, and they were nervous and jumpy for the rest of the day.

Now that they were back in something resembling civilization, though, if only on the edge of it, the awareness of who they were, and what they were, settled back over them heavily; it reduced most of their conversations to monosyllables and littered every interaction with spiky traps. Petric often caught Niall watching him in a way that was fraught with distrust, and he knew Niall expected him to sell him out the minute they encountered more Wasps.

And he also knew that, under the right circumstances, he might. He'd given his word and that still meant a lot to him, but he was also aware -- he'd been with the Rekef too long _not_ to be aware -- how circumstantial promises and honor could be.

Still, there was a part of him that hoped Niall made it home, to whatever was left of his home. He was realistic enough to know that the chances of Niall actually making it back to the Commonweal were negligible. Still, it was nice to think that Niall might. He knew he'd never know. After they went their separate ways, he couldn't imagine they'd ever see each other again.

 

***

 

After they left the empty farmhouse, in early afternoon when they stopped to eat something and rest, Niall murmured, "We're being followed."

Petric didn't twitch, but he leaned over to relace his boot and used that cover -- head down, hair hanging in his eyes -- to quickly sweep the horizon without moving his head too much. He had been getting a similar feeling, but he hadn't been quite sure how much credence to put in it. The Inapt could be more credulous about things like that ... and, he had found, were often right.

"Have you seen them?" he asked quietly.

Niall shook his head. "I'll go check it out," he said, and while Petric's mouth was still open to order him not to, he flared his wings and shot skyward.

"What are you doing?" Petric snapped, but of course Niall was no longer in earshot.

His small figure circled in the sky, darting here and there. Petric fully expected to see him plunge groundward with an arrow through him, but instead he finished his circuit of the area and dropped to earth, grinning with manic cheerfulness.

"Are you out of your _mind,"_ Petric said flatly.

"I saw her, though," Niall reported, bouncing in place. "And it _is_ a her. I'm not sure what kinden exactly; I couldn't see her close enough. Either a Spider or one of your lot, I think. Pale-skinned and kind of small. She really didn't seem happy to see me flying around up there."

 _Yeah, and you're lucky she didn't take it out on you._ Still, an odd suspicion nagged around the back of his mind. It didn't seem possible; it had been years since he'd seen her last. But he'd seen precious few Spiders this far from the Spiderlands, and female Wasps did not travel without their male protectors, at least not in his experience.

"How far is she?"

"Not far." Niall pointed. "Just over that hill. I'll go and --"

This time Petric got hold of a handful of his cloak, yanking him back to the ground as his wings burst out in a dazzle of color. " _We_ ," Petric said grimly, "will split up and flank her."

Trying to give Niall instructions turned out to be an exercise in frustration for both of them, because they ended up hitting the Apt/Inapt communication barrier -- Niall simply could not understand the instructions Petric was trying to give, but when Niall tried to explain what was to him a perfectly sensible way of describing the movements he intended to make ("left left with a turning, third left is on your right hand") Petric could only stare at him in mute incomprehension. Finally Petric threw his good hand in the air. "I'll go this way, you go that way. We circle around and catch her in a pincer motion between us. Does that make sense?"

Niall nodded and slipped off to the side. With surprising stealth, he vanished into what cover was available.

He'd fought in the Twelve-Year War, Petric reminded himself. Niall didn't generally seem like the martial type, but before his capture and enslavement, he must have been one of the guerrilla fighters who had made life so difficult for the Wasp army in the Commonweal.

 _Yes, and we defeated them._ But their victory had been so costly that they'd been willing to accept a partial victory under the Treaty of Pearl, rather than the total victory they'd gone for elsewhere.

He shook his head, and laid aside the walking stick. For long-distance travel, he still needed it, but over a short distance he could move more quietly without it. And it freed up his hand to sting. Cautiously he moved off the road, down a rough washout from some long-ago rain. He set his feet carefully, limping only a little, straining his eyes and ears for the slightest movement around him.

Field combat was not Petric's strength. He had spent most of his time on subtler business, doing Rekef intelligence work around the borders of the Empire. Petric was, largely, an information broker. Still, it didn't mean he couldn't fight when he had to.

He wished he was better armed. He'd allowed Niall to keep the shortsword because he had his sting; it was only fair. If their enemy had a bow, though, she could pick them off at her leisure.

_If it's her ..._

... then what? They hadn't exactly parted on good terms the last time he saw her. Besides, what would Elyssa be doing out in this lonely country? He didn't for a minute think she'd be looking for him, except perhaps to put a knife between his shoulder blades.

But that was an unworthy thought and he shook it off. _If she really wanted you dead, she'd have seen to it long ago. She simply wanted you out of her life. And it's your own fault --_

"Hello, Petric," a calm voice said -- a voice out of the past. It came from behind and above him.

Petric's breath hissed out. He turned slowly, fingers curling down. 

_She_ was standing on the edge of the small ravine he'd been using for cover. She had a shortbow trained on him, the string drawn back. Her hood was pushed down, her dark hair drawn back in a severe braid, just as she always used to wear it to travel or fight. 

The past caught Petric in its teeth. He didn't know what to say.

"Your Dragonfly slave won't be coming to help you," Elyssa said. Her hand was steady on the bowstring, but Petric knew she couldn't hold it at full draw for long.

"Did you kill him?"

"No, just gave him a little taste of my bite. He'll wake with a headache before too long. I thought we should have a chance to talk first."

"I'd rather talk without an arrow pointed at my face."

"You're never unarmed," she pointed out.

"Do you think I'd kill you?"

"Wouldn't you?" she countered. "If they gave you the order?"

"Wouldn't _you?_ " he shot back. "Or are you no longer with the Rekef?"

Her face was impassive, her eyes like chips of flint.

"Neither of us can trust the other one. We've never been able to. We both know how easily allegiances can turn. For what it's worth," Petric said, offering up a calculated bit of honesty, "I've missed you."

Elyssa canted her head very slightly to the side, and then slowly and carefully she lowered the bow, easing off the pressure on the string. Her face changed suddenly, her smile coming out like the sun from behind clouds. The shift was so abrupt that Petric knew one of her expressions had to be a mask: the stone-cold killer, or the bright smile of welcome that now lit her face. He knew which one he hoped for -- but also he knew which he believed in.

"Petric. I just had to be sure. Times change, and as you said, allegiances can turn. It really _has_ been a long time." She bounded gracefully down the rocks, using light touches of her Art to stick her feet to the stone, and landed in front of him with a flourish. She was still as graceful as ever -- and just as hard. 

"You look like you've been through the very pits of the earth," she added, and leaned up to kiss him, a quick brush of her lips across his that tugged painfully at the fine-tuned strings of memory.

"It's been a long road," he agreed, eyeing her cautiously. He was fairly sure he'd trusted the arrow more than he now trusted the hand of friendship she seemed to be extending. "Do you mind showing me where you left my traveling companion?" If he _was_ alive; if she hadn't lied.

"Your slave, you mean?" she asked lightly. "He's just over this way. I even dragged him out of the sun. I assumed you wouldn't want me to damage valuable property."

"He's not my slave."

"Someone else's slave? Petric, you thief."

She led the way, swift and light as if she hadn't just been traveling all day -- but Petric noticed that she kept to his left side, the one with the broken arm. In order to sting her, he'd have to do it across his body, an awkward movement that he couldn't help signaling in advance.

_No, you don't trust me at all, do you?_

Niall was crumpled in the shade of a rock with his hands bound. He was perfectly still, so still, in fact, that Petric felt sudden and irrational worry clutch at his chest. Elyssa would have had few dealings with Dragonflies; perhaps she'd misjudged the amount of venom -- but then she knelt to untie him, and Niall lurched up sharply, grabbing for her with hands that were not actually still tied at all.

He was still clumsy from the venom, but bore her down due to the element of sheer surprise. She kneed him in the stomach and, as he reeled, rolled on top of him. Petric glimpsed the flash of her venomous claws sliding out of her knuckles. 

"Stop!" he snapped.

Somewhat to his surprise, they did: Niall with his hands knotted in Elyssa's tunic, Elyssa with her claws at his throat. Then Elyssa pulled her hands back and jumped away gracefully. Niall sat up slowly. The rope, still tied, was looped loosely around his left wrist like a bracelet.

Niall scowled at Petric. "You two are working together? Why am I not surprised." He tore off the loop of rope and flung it to the ground.

"She and I had a talk," Petric said. "We know each other from a long time ago. She's not here to kill us ... I think." He cast a quick look at her.

This only made Niall scowl harder. "I might have known you'd have the kind of friends who like to sneak up behind people and stick them with poisoned knives."

Elyssa flexed her fingers. "It wasn't a knife." Her smile was the quick, bright one that could conceal anything underneath. "You're lucky I only put you to sleep."

"I want my sword back," Niall said, his voice one step away from petulant.

Elyssa pulled the shortsword from her belt and tossed it into the sand between them. "Petric says you aren't his slave."

"No. I'm no one's slave." He retrieved the sword and returned it to its usual place at his belt, then stood up, still somewhat shaky from the venom.

"Interesting." Elyssa's face still showed only mild, friendly curiosity. "And so far from the Commonweal, too."

"Something I plan to fix as soon as possible. And just what exactly are the odds of _you_ running into one of your 'old friends' out here in the middle of nowhere?" Niall asked Petric. His tone was not friendly. "Don't think I haven't noticed you've been leaving a trail with those marks you're making, whatever they are."

Petric was momentarily at a loss for words. Underestimating Niall was, he'd begun to realize, a very bad idea. The Commonweal might be primitive and backward, its people Inapt, but that didn't mean they were either uneducated or stupid.

"Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I'm not here on behalf of the Empire or anyone else." Elyssa looped her arm through Petric's good one. "I'm here as Petric's friend, that's all. I was working as a caravan guard when rumors came in that he'd been lost in the desert. And so I came."

Petric didn't want to be too obvious about shaking her off with Niall watching them, the drug haze quickly clearing out of those too-sharp eyes. "Congratulations, you found me. Good job."

 

***

 

Elyssa turned out to be impossible to shake off in general. She introduced herself to Niall, who simply glared at her without reciprocating, and then decided to travel with them. There wasn't much they could do short of trying to stab her, and Petric was pretty sure that wouldn't end well for anyone, least of all them.

He wished he knew what she wanted. She seemed to be keeping up the friendly facade -- and it _was_ a facade, Petric was sure. But there was still a small, weak part of him that went soft when she turned one of those bright smiles on him -- a part of him that wanted to enjoy the illusion, at least, of the camaraderie they used to have. She was funny, and energetic, and helpful. When they camped for the night in the husk of another burned-out farm, using the half-ruined barn as an enclosure to hide their fire, she gathered firewood and contributed some of her supplies to make a stew. It was the most satisfying meal they'd managed to have since he and Niall had been traveling together.

Niall was very slowly unbending towards Elyssa. She managed to get him to smile a few times, and then coaxed out a laugh by telling a story over dinner of a time she and Petric had forgotten their Wayhouse had a curfew, got locked out in the pouring rain, and had to sneak into the cellar of a brothel. She made it, somehow, a lot more interesting and funny than Petric remembered it. Of course, it helped that she hadn't mentioned they'd been in the area in the first place to kill a Wasp traitor.

Looking across the firelight at Niall's grin, making him look exactly as young as he probably was, Petric wanted to tell him to hold onto his distrust. _Don't you know it's only her Art working on you? This is what she does. She gets you off your guard, and then ..._ But he still didn't know what she was up to, so he didn't want to tip her off that he was only playing along.

And, in truth, he wasn't sure how much of it _was_ just playing along, in the same way he wasn't sure how much of her visible enjoyment of his company was fake. That had always been the problem with him and Elyssa, right up until the end.

"So exactly how do you two know each other, anyway?" Niall asked. "A Wasp and a Spider. That's kind of unusual, isn't it?"

"Not as much as you'd think," Elyssa said, while Petric was still trying to figure out how to answer without admitting he wasn't regular Wasp army. "Oh, I'm sure things are different back in the heartland of the Empire. But out here, along the edges, the lines blur. It's a long way from home for them. And, aside from slaves, there are very few Wasp women out here, you may have noticed." Her smile was sharp. "Very different from _my_ home, as you might expect."

And with this, she neatly segued into talking about the Spiderlands, which Niall also seemed to be interested in. Petric wondered if he'd noticed how she had steered the conversation away from the matter of his past with her.

The night deepened outside, and finally Niall stood up with a yawn. "Do you two want to, uh ... share? I don't mind sleeping outside. I'm used to it by now."

Before Petric could answer, Elyssa curled her hand around his arm. "Thank you. That's really sweet. Are you sure you don't mind?"

Niall shook his head, and turned to slip out the ruined end of the barn.

"Wake me for a watch at moonset," Petric called after him. Then he turned to Elyssa, letting the smile he'd mustered for appearance's sake fall away. "What are you up to?"

"So suspicious." She cut her eyes sideways in the direction Niall had gone. "You're as bad as he is."

"With reason," he pointed out. "The way we left things, there's no way I believe you showing up smiling and friendly. Pointing an arrow at me is a lot more along the lines of the greeting I thought I'd get. It's when the smiles come out that I know to look for a knife in your other hand."

"Petric ..." Elyssa sighed and leaned back on her hands. "Yes, I was angry at you. I was very angry. But time passes, and you lose friends and lovers, and after awhile, you start thinking about missed chances, and taking advantage of the opportunities you still have." 

She reached out and ran her fingertip lightly over his lips. When she leaned forward to kiss him, he didn't pull away.

 _This is a terrible idea,_ the rational part of his brain informed him. Petric told it to shut up.

They undressed each other slowly beside the fire. There was no bed, only a pile of hay. But they'd slept together under rougher conditions, back in the old days. 

As they moved together beside the dying fire, gentle and urgent by turns, Petric thought how strange it was to see the tracks of the years they'd been apart written on her skin. He traced each new scar, wondering how she'd gotten it and if he could have done anything to prevent it if they'd been --

\-- if they'd been _what_ , was always the question. He was Rekef and so was she. There was no future for them together. No one really cared if a Rekef agent slept with one of their stable of non-Wasp spies, except perhaps to wonder about their lack of taste. But if their superiors had learned there was an actual _relationship_ , the absolute best case was that they'd be assigned to different parts of the Empire's borders and never allowed contact with each other again. All they could have was what they'd always had, a series of stolen moments, each one taken with the awareness that it couldn't last.

She had offered him a different future, once, but it was no future for him; it would lead to nothing but disaster for both of them. Perhaps the fact that she no longer seemed angry was a sign that she'd come to realize it as well.

It had been a very long time since Petric had shared his bed with anyone, and an even longer time since he'd slept with someone he cared about. He would not tell her this, because he knew better than to give a Spider-kinden this kind of hold over him, but since Elyssa, he had not found it in him to enjoy other women's company, though he'd tried. As a young man, like nearly all the men in the Wasp military, he'd taken pleasure with the slave women kept for that purpose, but even before Elyssa he'd already lost his taste for it; those acts of passionless physical congress had left him empty and hollow and disgusted with himself. He had not quite known what he wanted until he met her; had not known, in fact, that it was possible to enjoy a woman's company on both a physical and intellectual level.

Now, in the aftermath, he lay sleepy and sated with Elyssa's slight weight atop him, her head bent into the crook of his shoulder, carefully avoiding his injured arm. She stroked his hair lightly with one hand, fingers gliding gently down his neck, and he realized that this was the first time he'd been happy in a very long time.

Which made the sharp sting under his ear all the more shocking and unwelcome.

There was a split second when he couldn't quite register what the pain _was_ , when his mind threw up a defensive wall of denial in the face of the evidence of betrayal, and then he threw her off him. She was expecting it and landed gracefully on her feet, the spines already retracting into her hands.

Petric flung out his hand, the sting gathering in his palm, as he rolled to get his back against the wall. He could already feel the venom working on him, a leaden tingling spreading through his limbs. _What did she get me with?_ He knew Elyssa had extraordinary control over that particular Art of hers, and she had several different venoms tailored for different circumstances. Some, like the one she'd used on Niall, would only paralyze or send their victim to sleep. Some would kill.

"Oh come now, Petric," Elyssa said, standing light-footed with her knees bent and arms raised slightly, prepared to dive in whatever direction was needed. "Surely betrayal is not such a shocking thing for a Rekef agent."

The words were like a slap in the face, overcoming his lingering hesitation, and he released the bolt of golden fire. Even as it left his hand, regret rose to smother him -- _even now, even after what she's done_ \-- but she dodged easily, and the sting punched the wall instead.

He tried to track her with his open palm, but he was already losing control over his limbs. He sank back onto their rough bed, the room spinning around him.

"How are you feeling?" Elyssa asked.

"Sick," he slurred, staring at the ceiling. "Dizzy. Drunk." He managed to clamp his mouth shut before any more words spilled out, but now he knew what she'd stung him with. He had seen her interrogate prisoners this way before. He wasn't sure whether to be glad she hadn't killed him, or horrified of what he might say under the influence of this particular blend of specially concocted venom and Spider Art.

Elyssa climbed on top of him. There was nothing sexual about it this time; she was all business, crouching over him and placing her knuckles against his neck. He felt no prickle of her Spider's bite, but his skin was tingling and half-dead all over anyway.

"And now we shall talk," she said.

"Why did you do this?" Petric asked. The worst part about the interrogation venom, he discovered, was that it had wrenched _all_ his inhibitions away. His emotions, usually locked down as tightly as possible, were now a seething wellspring flooding him. He teetered on the edge of crying or laughing, and only an iron force of what little will remained to him could stop tears from spilling out. "I thought we were -- I thought this wasn't business."

"It's always business, with us," she sighed, and Petric wasn't sure if, by "us", she meant the two of them, or the Rekef, or her people.

"I thought you loved me," he continued to babble helplessly. "I love you, you know ... don't you?"

He'd never said it out loud, not through all the years they'd known each other, and hearing the words, and worse, the abject pleading in his own voice made him twist inwardly with shame and humiliation. He would have rather she'd killed him.

Elyssa placed a fingertip on his lips. "Stop." He could feel her Art working on him. Normally he was largely immune, having grown accustomed to noticing the subtle pressure of her mind on his during their years together, but right now, with her venom tearing down his barricades, he couldn't stop her from slipping in and battering down what few inhibitions he had left. "Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions, and you --"

Something slammed into her and knocked her off him.

It took Petric's drug-fogged brain a moment to catch up with what was going on: that the _something_ was Niall, and he'd body-slammed her off Petric without taking the time to draw his sword. The sword was out now, and Elyssa's fast reflexes had taken her most of the way across the room, seizing her own rapier from her pile of clothing as she went. Now, she crouched in a fighter's stance, heedless of her nakedness.

"I knew we couldn't trust you!" Niall snapped, pointing the sword at her. 

"Don't!" Petric managed to say. The idea that they might kill each other, while he lay immobilized and unable to interfere, was more than he could bear.

This time, however, they both ignored him. Elyssa looked down the line of her rapier at Niall. "All I want to do is ask him some questions, and I need true answers. That's all."

"You poisoned him!"

"As I poisoned you, but you're still standing here, aren't you? The venom I gave him will force him to answer my questions. He'll have a terrible headache later. That's all."

"Petric?" Niall asked. "Is that true?"

"It's true," Petric said. "I can't lie. I don't know if she's planning to kill me afterwards."

"I'm not." Elyssa eased into a more upright stance, but still had the rapier in a guard position.

Niall looked from her to Petric and back. "And you couldn't just _ask_ him? By the way, I don't suppose you could put some clothes on? This is really awkward."

"I'll get dressed if you put away your sword."

There was another moment of confrontation before Niall lowered his blade. Elyssa smiled slightly and reached for her tunic.

Keeping an eye on her, Niall edged sideways, picked up Petric's cloak, and threw it over him. "You looked cold."

"I was cold," Petric agreed. "Did I say I can't lie? Because I can't. This is really terrible, you know."

A hint of a smile quirked Niall's mouth. He leaned against the wall, sword down but still in his hand, alert and clearly on guard. Petric, still unable to easily move his head, could just see him out of the corner of his eye. 

"I can think of all sorts of things I'd love to ask you," Niall said.

"Please don't," Petric said fervently.

"Oh, this is tragic," Elyssa sighed, tying her breeches. "You haven't told this poor boy a single thing about yourself, have you, Petric?"

"No, he doesn't know anything about me. It's not your place to tell him, Elyssa." His ragged self-control frayed a little more, and he added, almost plaintively, "It's not _fair."_

"What don't I know?" Niall asked sharply.

Elyssa turned the rapier over in her hand, where she could raise it in an instant if she had to. "Petric and I are both Rekef, Niall. Do you know who the Rekef are?"

"No!" Petric protested, as sharply as he could in his current condition. "Don't tell him!" _Yeah,_ jeered the drug-hazed rational part of his mind, _that's not suspicious at all._

There was a short hesitation before Niall answered. "I've heard of it. I'm not sure what they do. All I know is, when the guards talked about them, they didn't sound happy."

Her smile was a cold hook in the dying firelight. "Everyone in the regular Wasp army fears the Rekef. Do you know why? It's because the Rekef are the ones who do the things that ordinary Wasps balk at. Think about what they did to your countrymen, Dragonfly. Now think about the people who do the things that even the Wasps consider too shameful and too cruel."

"I don't understand." Niall looked back and forth between them, his face shuttered. His gaze came to rest on her. "You're -- working for the Wasps? But you're a Spider."

"They employ agents of other kinden as well, along the Empire's borders. Anyone who will not scruple to put their sword in, for adequate pay."

"It's not like that," Petric managed to say. "It's information-gathering, mostly -- we ask questions, spread rumors --"

"Oh, really?" Elyssa's voice cracked like a whip. "So you've never killed for the Rekef, Petric? You've never tortured for them? You've never thrown young women to the slave pits, knowing what would happen to them there? Never betrayed a friend because the orders that came down said you had to? Go on, tell Niall if you're a good person or not."

"I'm not a good person," he said automatically, the venom laying all his defenses bare. "Of course I'm not. You shouldn't trust me. You shouldn't _like_ me. I --" And here he faltered, unable to remember if he had been going somewhere with that.

"And that's why I needed to ask you questions when you couldn't lie to me," Elyssa said. "Though I would have preferred to do it without an audience, the audience appears to have invited itself. So, tell me, do you have any orders regarding me? Have you been told to apprehend me? To kill me?"

"No," Petric said immediately, with all the fervor he had in him. "Nothing at all. I haven't heard anything about you in years. I wasn't even sure if you were still alive."

"Remember you can't lie." He felt her using her Art on him again, seeking cracks. But he was already laid bare; there was nothing to tear open.

"I'm not lying. I have no orders regarding you."

Elyssa sighed. A little tension eased out of her. "I had to be sure. There's been a lot going on with the Rekef lately. Purges and worse. There's a big shake-up, and it doesn't show signs of slowing down anytime soon."

There didn't seem to be a question in that, so Petric didn't say anything.

Elyssa stood looking at him for a long moment. He could almost see what she was thinking: he had to answer any question she put to him. Any question at all. And then she drew a shuddering breath, looked down, and sheathed her sword.

"It would probably be best for someone to stay with him until the venom wears off," she said, turning on her heel. "To make sure he doesn't choke or anything."

"Is he going to?" Niall asked, sounding alarmed.

"They don't choke all _that_ often," Elyssa said, and left.

"So, uh." Niall stared after her, and then looked down at Petric. "She's mad at you, isn't she? What'd you do to upset her so badly?"

"A few years ago, she wanted me to leave the Rekef for her. I chose the Rekef instead," Petric said, unable to answer with anything other than total honesty, and considered stinging himself in the face.

There was a moment of startled and then thoughtful silence from Niall, as it sank in that Petric couldn't actually lie to him right now. Petric managed, with a great effort, to flop himself over on his side, facing Niall, so he could see him more easily. He tried not to think about the fact that, if he revealed anything too sensitive, he might have to kill him. Later. When his arms worked again.

"I might have to kill you. If I tell you anything you aren't supposed to know."

... except, right now, _not talking_ was something he was incapable of.

"Thanks, Petric," Niall said. He glanced down at the sword in his hand, sighed, and sheathed it. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I don't want to kill you."

"... good?"

"I'd hate having to do that," Petric said. "I really want to stop talking now."

Niall choked on something like a laugh. He chewed on his lip for a minute. "I hope this doesn't count as something you'd have to kill me for, but ... are you planning on turning me in?"

"No," Petric said. It surprised him to find that this particular truth was not a hard one to part with. "I meant what I said in the desert. I want you to have a chance to get home, if there's any chance at all, as vanishingly unlikely as it is that you'll actually make it -- I mean, there's next to no chance you can get back to the Commonweal without getting picked up as a slave or shot or --"

"Okay, that's more than I really wanted to hear," Niall broke in. "But you aren't going to turn me in to the next bunch of slavers who come by, or mention in your report to your superiors that oh by the way, there's an escaped Dragonfly slave headed north, or whatever?"

"No. I like you. I don't know why, but I do. I think you deserve to get back where you came from, if it's still possible."

"Petric ..." Niall shifted closer, sitting down beside him on the hay-strewn floor of the barn. He was silent for a moment, then he said, looking at the floor rather than at Petric, "Did ... Did you do all those things she said? Killing and raping and torturing, all of that?"

"Not raping _personally,"_ Petric felt compelled to say in his own defense, before managing to bite it off. It was getting a little easier to not answer questions now. The venom's effects were starting to wear off, ever so slightly.

"Oh, yeah, that makes it better." Niall picked up pieces of straw, breaking them up. "And ... all those things you ... Did you do them in the Commonweal too?"

"Of course I did them in the Commonweal." He was too tired and sick -- not just from the venom, but from all of it -- to even bother trying to hold back. "What did you think I did in the Commonweal? I'm a Wasp, Niall. You knew that all along. My people fought yours for twelve years. What did you _think_ I did?"

Niall didn't answer. He leaned back against the wall and kept breaking up pieces of straw, smaller and smaller.

Petric closed his eyes and tried to shut out the world. The out-of-control feeling of Elyssa's venom was starting to give way to an all-over, miserable sick feeling. Every time he opened his eyes, Niall was still there, leaning on the wall and staring at nothing, as Petric clenched his teeth and rode out the nauseating tide of the venom.

 

***

 

In the morning, over the ashes of the fire, the three of them confronted each other with wary silence.

Petric hadn't expected Elyssa to still be there, but she was. She produced flat cakes of travel bread from a pouch at her belt and handed them around for breakfast without speaking. Petric briefly entertained the notion that they might be poisoned, and noticed Niall sniffing his, but he reminded himself that if she wanted to kill them, she'd had ample opportunity.

Niall wasn't looking at him. After they'd eaten, the Dragonfly straightened and threw his ragged cloak over his shoulder. "So," he said. "I think probably this would be a good point to split up, don't you? You know where I'm going, and I know where _you're_ going, and it isn't the same place."

Petric had known they were going to have to split up eventually; it made no sense that the regret was so sharp. "I think that makes sense," he agreed.

Niall nodded. "So," he said, and then stopped. They looked at each other for a moment. What was there to say, really? There was a war going on, and they were on opposite sides. The desert truce had held, which, Petric thought, was probably more than either of them had expected. There were no goodbyes that were meaningful here.

Niall leaped into the air and spread his wings. _He's been really slowing down for my sake,_ Petric thought, as he watched the Dragonfly's graceful figure arrow away, following the gentle curve of the road. The thought made him feel guilty, though he wasn't quite sure about what.

Niall did not look back. 

Petric looked away, and discovered Elyssa watching him, her eyes hooded. "You do know how to make friends," she said.

"You're the one who told him we were Rekef."

Her smile was lopsided and unhappy. "I can't speak for you, but I don't know how much longer I will be. And even if you haven't been ordered to kill me yet, it might only be a matter of time."

"I don't see why they would," Petric objected, but there was a sharp twist in his chest. He'd been out of touch for a while. A lot of things could change. "We've been loyal --"

Her derisive snort cut across his protest. "Has that ever mattered? You and I have been on too many traitor-hunting missions not to know that 'traitor' is often just a code word for people the Rekef don't like."

"So what's the answer?" Petric asked, angry now himself. "Turn traitor ourselves?"

"I already asked you to come away with me, long ago. I got my answer, and I won't be foolish enough to ask again. But I'll tell you something, Petric." She slid a little closer to him. "I'll cut your throat before I'll let you kill me."

Maybe there was a trace of her truth-serum venom still running through his veins, because he said, "I know you have no reason to believe me, but _I'd_ cut my throat before I'd willingly cut yours."

When he looked at her again, she was smiling. It was a rather sad smile, but a more honest one -- and, to him, more beautiful -- than any of yesterday's bright, fake smiles. "Oh, Petric," she said. "Is this all there is for us? Lies and betrayals and doing other people's dirty work?"

"We're Rekef," he pointed out. "That's the life we chose."

"In a way, it's the life I've always had. Living in the Spiderlands is not much different. I think I believed it would be different elsewhere, but of course it's not."

There was a short silence, during which they didn't look at each other, and then her small, sword-callused hand closed over his, and her fingers laced into Petric's.

"What are your plans now?" she asked. "If you can tell me."

He didn't point out that she could have asked him last night and made sure of the answers. "Find a town. Report in. See what my next orders are. The usual, I suppose."

"Me too," she said. When he looked at her, she was smiling at him, still with that slightly sad edge -- but a little more warmth under it, now. "It seems we might be going the same way. For a little while."

His hand turned over, almost of its own accord, and closed around hers, the tips of his fingers just touching the small hard nodules where her venomous spines slid out. She could have killed him with a thought -- just as his hands, lethal weapons always, could have killed her as easily. _But we don't. That's trust for us, I suppose._

"I think I might like that," he said, and smiled back.


End file.
